Handcuffs, Kisses and Awkward Situations Page 17

  “I like the sound of that…” he muttered, breathlessly.

  “Of what?” I mumbled.

  “Of us.”

  Twenty Nine

  Sneaking back inside the house at six in the morning was just as difficult as sneaking out, especially because I was practically seeing double and couldn’t walk straight from a complete lack of sleep due to the addictiveness of Ryder Collins’ lips. His silky voice mumbling secrets as his lips travelled to kiss across my face had enough adrenaline to keep us awake until now, where I was brain-dead from happiness and fatigue.

  I was pretty sure Dad had figured out my absence and I was way too tired to give a crap for any punishment, so groggily, I made my way towards the front door. Yawning, I raised my knuckles to knock but to my surprise, Eve stood there, in bunny pajamas and matching slippers with a bowl of cereal in her hands. She looked smug as I shuffled silently into the house and clicked the door shut.

  “Was Dad mad?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.

  Eve shook her head. “They don’t know.”

  “Then how…” I trailed off, dropping onto the lounge chair and curling up like a child.

  “I was seventeen not too long ago too, you know,” she answered, dropping down next to me as she shoved more cereal into her mouth. “You did give Mrs. Elton a heart attack though. Your pathetic little attempt to sneak out only attracted attention. I honestly can’t believe we’re related sometimes. I need to teach you a thing or two about sneaking out.”

  I groaned sleepily. “So how do you know if everyone else doesn’t?”

  “Mrs. Elton, bless her soul, was so embarrassed about the little incident that happened last night that she totally covered for you. Besides, she knows us Montgomery girls sneak out all the time. How do you think I got past her all the time?” She sighed dreamily. “Nights sneaking out with Patrick, making out in his car-”

  “I think I just threw up a little.”

  “What makes me want to throw up is that you’re wearing half his clothes.”

  I had wriggled back into my pants before I left but I liked how comfortable Ryder’s jumper was so I kept it with me.. I smiled dreamily. And just as I was about to drift to sleep, Eve smacked me on the butt. Hard.

  “Ouch,” I complained, looking up at her through tired, squinted eyes.

  “You need to get out of that jumper and hop back into bed before dad sees you wearing that.”

  I knew she was right, which annoyed me, but I obeyed and sleepily lifted myself from the lounge and shuffled towards my room, trying to keep my eyes open. Once I was locked in my room, I hid under the covers and fell asleep.

  ~♥♥♥~

  I slept for a blissful ten hours and woke up on Sunday afternoon, feeling hungry. Peeling off Ryder’s jumper, I went to the bathroom and took a quick shower to reluctantly scrub his smell from my skin to ensure Dad didn’t notice I smelled different. When I had changed, I went downstairs, only to hear Eve’s maniac laughter ringing through the house.

  “Eve?” I called. “Patrick?”

  But when I entered the kitchen, there was Ryder, looking extremely uncomfortable as my sister laughed hysterically at him. Patrick, who was extremely talented in ignoring her weirdness, was preparing her – probably third - afternoon snack.

  “Do it again!” she chanted like an excited little girl.

  Ryder looked around the room awkwardly until he saw me. He took the chance of scraping his chair back and scrambling away from my older sister. He looked good that morning, with his dark messy hair and checked button down that made his shoulders look broader and figure look more defined.

  “Hey,” he said and in one quick motion gently brushed his lips against my forehead. It was so quick and easily concealed that no one would have noticed the little action of affection. “I was wondering if you’d like to come over.”

  “No,” Eve waited, taking hold of Ryder’s forearm, to which Ryder stiffened. “Nora, you have to see what he can do. Please, Nora. Make your boyfriend do it.”

  I blushed. “Do what?”

  “Look! Just do it!” Eve insisted.

  Ryder, who looked seriously pained at that point, looked over at my sister in defeat. She grinned happily and lifted up her shirt. For a second, I thought she was going to flash everyone but she stopped once her belly was on full display and Ryder hesitantly pressed his palm to her stomach.

  Eve burst out in a fit of giggles.

  I, on the other hand, just stared at them confused, like I didn’t understand some kind of inside joke. Eve’s laughter slowly settled and she looked at me with watery eyes.

  “Oh, isn’t it hilarious, Nora?” she asked me. I blinked. When I didn’t respond, she rushed to her boyfriend and playfully poked him in the ribs. “Isn’t it funny, Patrick?”

  “Very funny, baby.” He wrapped his arm around her and kissed her nose.

  “I don’t get it,” I awkwardly piped up.

  Eve placed a hand on Patrick’s chest and smiled. “Whenever Ryder touches my stomach, he kicks.”

  “Who? Ryder?”

  “No!” she answered. “The baby.”

  That made a lot more sense. Eve then went on about how funny it was and Patrick joked that his son was already protecting his mother. Taking this as a grand opportunity to run for it, I took Ryder’s hand and led him to the front door. There, sat his sleek, black car. I smiled, remembering the car.

  Once we were inside, Ryder reached over and gave me a real kiss. It was soft and gentle and he tasted of spearmint and I enjoyed it. The car smelled just like Ryder too, of aftershave and soap. Then he leaned back, gave me a heart stopping smile and started reversing out of my driveway.

  “Your sister scares me,” Ryder said, once we were on the road.

  “She scares everybody.” I waved a dismissive hand.

  He nodded. “I wanted to come over as a surprise but you weren’t awake yet and so your sister started talking to me like I was one of her girlfriends at a tea party. I officially know how regularly she pees since she got pregnant, her weird cravings and her mum-and-bub bonding routines.”

  I absorbed nothing but the first part. “You came over to surprise me?”

  “Yeah…” He looked uncomfortable as colour spread across his cheeks so I dropped it and smiled to myself.

  “So what are we going to do today?” I asked as we rounded to Ryder’s street.

  But when we stopped at the front of his house, I saw a silver car sitting out the front, which definitely wasn’t Ryder’s or his mother’s. As I was contemplating who the mystery person could be, the driver’s door opened and out stepped Caine, lips pursed and jaw set.

  “There are actually some things we need to talk about.”

  Thirty

  When I walked into the Collins’ house, I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. My stomach twisted into a knot as I silently followed them into the kitchen. Ryder offered us something to eat but I declined. I didn’t think I could hold it down. Then the room fell in this extremely awkward silence which made me more uncomfortable than I already was.

  He did, however, pour us glasses of Coke, which I happily took between my hands and started rubbing the glass against my face, the cool condensation seeping into my skin and cooling down my cheeks. At that point, I didn’t matter how ridiculous I looked, I just needed to calm down.

  Once I was done with the face and glass rubbing, I brought the rim of the cup to my lips and chugged down the cold, sweet liquid in four gulps. It made my throat fizz up from drinking too fast and when I slammed the glass down, I was breathless. It took me a moment or two to recover but when I was better, I was ready for this confrontation.

  “What’s this all about?” I asked, nerves dominating curiosity.

  Ryder didn’t say anything. He stood there and stared at the kitchen table. Caine didn’t say anything either. He just pulled off his jumper, revealing a T-shirt and a bandage that looked like it was in dire need of a change. He sucked in a breath as he examined the bloo
d that was seeping through the cloth.

  “You’re not afraid of blood, right?”

  I shook my head, but felt sick anyway. Caine started peeling the bandage off and it looked absolutely awful. A deep looking gash sliced through his forearm, dried blood and yellowing puss surrounding the injury. I felt something rise in the back of my throat but I swallowed it and kept staring. It was horrible, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away, like a traumatic car accident.

  Caine laughed humourlessly. “I knew it was infected.”

  Ryder was already looking under the kitchen sink for the first aid kit. “I told you. You should have gotten it checked out, man.”

  “It would have just led to questions and police. We’re already too deep in with that stupid fight down at the beach the other night.”

  “Again,” I repeated, feeling left out of the conversation. “What is this all about?”

  Caine and Ryder exchanged glances. If this discussion was going to give me answers about why Caine has a giant cut in his forearm, I kind of wanted the whole conversation to progress a little faster. Eventually, Ryder sighed and opened the first aid kit, in search for some cotton swabs and some disinfectant. He kept his eyes anywhere but on me.

  “The fire at school,” Ryder explained, “happened to be deliberate.”

  “And it’s a lot more serious than a few burned school supplies,” Caine added. “A year seven girl is in hospital. She’s hearing impaired, so she didn’t hear the announcement, or the alarm. She wasn’t paying attention to the lights either.”

  “Will she be okay?” My voice was barely over a whisper.

  Caine shrugged. “Honestly, no one knows. I heard she’s got some really bad burns. But the point is, her parents are pissed and obviously, they want to lock these assholes in jail.”

  “Problem is… They think those assholes are us,” Ryder finished, scrubbing a hand down his face.

  I wasn’t sure how to process all of this, so I just sat there, looking back and forth between the two like a game of tennis. Ryder was busying himself with rummaging through the first aid kid, even though everything needed was already sitting out on the bench. Caine was concentrating on cleaning up his wound and putting on a fresh bandage.

  “Caine and I have been pulled out for questioning these past few days,” Ryder explained, finally shutting the first aid kid. “Apparently being handcuffed isn’t evidence enough that I had nothing to do with it.”

  “We do know who it was though,” Caine responded, using his free hand and teeth to tie a secure knot to keep the bandage in place. “Chris Baker. He has a kid brother and he’s the one who called the crisis hotline the night of the fire. Guess Chris overheard the conversation, realising his brother freaked and that I was on the other line. Then those assholes waited for me in the woods by my house on my way home and some dick slashed me with a knife. It hurt like a bitch. It still hurts like a bitch.”

  Ryder then took my hands in his across the table. His hands were warm and rough and completely enclosed around mine. With our fingers laced, he brushed his thumb down mine and gave me the faintest ghost of a smile. I returned the small curve of my lips.

  “I didn’t want to drag you into this,” he said softly. “But I didn’t want any more secrets between us. Not after last night.”

  Caine’s eyebrows shot up at that.

  “Don’t be a pervert,” I muttered to Caine.

  He held up his hands in a defensive gesture.

  Ryder and I laughed and let go of each other, just as the phone rang. The three of us exchanged worried glances. Could it be the police? Some kind of specialised detective? Possibly even Ryder’s dad? Ryder looked pained, kind of like a child who was constipated and even Caine looked kind of green.

  It rang once, twice, three times.

  “Maybe we should answer it,” I suggested.

  No one moved. No one said a word.

  “It’s just a phone call, right?” Ryder said, staring distantly at the phone. “Maybe it’s just another round of community service or something.”

  I stood from the stool I was sitting on and headed towards the phone. We were being ridiculous. I decided the worst case scenario was that it was the police who wanted to call us in for questioning. Evidently, they couldn’t accuse any of us without any legitimate evidence. We were all innocent victims; unaffected but nevertheless lives threatened.

  “I’ll answer. How’s that?” I said.

  Ryder looked a little relieved and slightly ashamed that I was the manliest in the room. And on the last minute, his hand placed over mine and together, our fingers curled around the phone.

  “There’s no longer a you and I. There’s an us.”

  I smiled at Ryder and together, we brought the phone between our ears. It was rather uncomfortable, our heads squished together in a competition to hear who was on the other line but just as I was about to suggest we go on speaker phone, a voice spoke, quite uncertainly.

  “Hello?” It was Patrick. “Ryder? Nora? I’m not quite sure I have the right number, but it was listed under Eve’s phone. Listen, I need you to come and get us.”

  In the background, there was high pitched scream of pure agonising pain. At first, I didn’t understand, but then it occurred to me: Eve was having her baby.

  “Oh my God,” I cried, snatching the phone from Ryder. “Her water-”

  “Is all over the front seat of my car. We were on our way to buy tacos and then her water broke and I was in a hurry reversed of the drive through and hit that spiky thing and Nora, you’ve got to get here now because we are not giving birth in my car.”

  It was the first time I had heard Patrick lose his cool. But somehow, through all the panic, I could hear the sound of his happiness, his excitement, his fright and pride of being a father. Eve started wailing in the background.

  “Patrick! Patrick! I can feel it… Oh, God, I can feel it. If you don’t want your son to be born in a Sedan, then bring me to the god damned hospital!”

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “Corner of Greenwich and Paisley.”

  He hung up after that and before I could tell Ryder, he took my hand and together, we raced into the car. I was having mixed emotions and worry and joy, and even though we raced through three continuous streetlights, I couldn’t help but nervously smile. Eve was going to be a mother of a beautiful baby boy and I was going to be his aunt.

  Thirty One

  “I’m really starting to regret this,” Caine spoke up from the front. “Please make sure there are no pleasant surprises in the backseat later.”

  As a last minute decision, Caine followed us outside and jumped into his car, motioning for us to follow. He had a coherent reason too. Ryder’s little sports car was unsuitable for a pregnant woman to be seated in the back. So, instead, we used Caine’s car, which, from the look on his face, told us that he was starting to regret the offer. Every few minutes, his eyes would skitter from the road and onto the rear view mirror where he’d check Eve wasn’t doing anything she wasn’t supposed to.

  “God damn it!” Eve yelled in pain. “Drive faster!”

  Her screams were glass shattering, thick with agony. But Patrick seemed to distract her at times by whispering soothing things into her ear and letting her squeeze his hand. Most of the time, she looked angry at him, like she wanted to slap him with her fist but there was the rare millisecond moments where the real emotions of being a mother shone on her flustered, sweaty face.

  Caine hit the pedal and we went soaring through intersections and streetlights, barely escaping collisions and getting a lot of shouts and honks. We broke about twenty-seven road rules, went over half a dozen legal speed limits and made a lot of dangerous swerves, all while Eve was shouting painfully at us to hurry.

  When we got to the hospital, Eve was ushered into a wheelchair and was instantly pushed into the birthing wing. That left the three of us in the waiting room. Caine returned to his car to check for anything unwanted, Ryder went to look fo
r food and I went outside to call my parents. When they answered, they instantly thought something was wrong. My voice was loud and my words were rushed, turning my speech into a flurry of gibberish.

  “Eve,” I wheezed, after the seventh time. Her name was the only coherent word I could pronounce and after a moment it clicked.

  “Oh, you mean- Oh, my! We’ll be there soon.”

  When she hung up, I walked back into the waiting room and sunk into a chair. My legs jittered in discomfort and my chest squeezed to a point where I had to gasp for breath. A nurse even came over to ask if I was alright, but I could only nod and press my head between my legs. I closed my eyes and tried to slow both my heart beats and my breathing.

  I wasn’t the one having the baby. But yet, I felt sick to the stomach, head spinning, palms sweating and body shaking. Horrible thoughts filled my head, of breathing complications, the child being sick, Eve having to go into surgery because of internal bleeding.

  Before I could think of anything else, Ryder’s arms wrapped around me and he pulled me to his chest, holding me close as he kissed my forehead. “Don’t worry, Nora. Everything is okay.”

  “You said ‘is’. Not ‘will be’.”

  He smiled. “Because everything is okay. Right now, right here, everything is fine. And everything from here, is going to be okay.”

  Ryder leaned in and kissed a tear that had rolled down my cheek and made its way down my jaw. Then he held me, protectively, lovingly, reassuringly. He didn’t have to say anything to make me feel better. Just his hand running down my back, warm and gentle held enough comfort to make the sickening feeling disappear.